Archive for May, 2017

There was a time when the word ‘proxy’ was used little outside the geeky chat of an IT department. The first primary use of a proxy server was too control access to the internet in corporate and education networks. By enforcing the proxy as the only access to the internet, networks could be secured and web activity logged and controlled if necessary. Basically only one computer would be allowed access to the world wide web and that would be the proxy server itself.

Times have changed and now proxies represent something other that restrictions, people look for US proxy buy options for a variety of reasons. One ironically is that of try to maintain some privacy, the internet has become much more pervasive but there’s never been that much privacy. The average internet user is probably unaware that every file they download, every image the view or move they watch is recorded and logged at their ISP. Your internet history is very far from a secret and is equally coveted by the state and big business for different reasons.

So how does buying a US proxy help matters with regards to privacy. A well configured proxy or better still a VPN service will do three things with regards online privacy. Firstly it will hide all record of your activity at your ISP. Secondly (although this is normally only a VPN) your data can be encrypted to keep personal details and things like logon credentials secure. Finally it hides your location from the websites you visit, stopping them logging and recording your activity as well.

The use of a secure VPN when browsing the web, certainly improves your security. However there is another important aspect to consider which people should consider – region locking. This is the practice where a web site will attempt to control who gets access to a certain site or content. It’s particularly common in media and TV sites who block access to surfers who are not from a particular country. This is why you’ll find people asking for a US proxy buy, for the simple reason that a US based proxy or VPN will allow you to watch US sites like Netflix, Hulu and NBC irrespective of your location. Ever tried using your Pandora account outside the USA, well it won’t work.

There are a myriad of reasons websites block access to people outside their domestic market. Online banking is often restricted due to the risk of digital fraud, yet ironically it’s travellers who need the service more. Companies like US Netflix restrict based to copyright laws, digital content needs to be licensed in individual countries which obviously can be expensive. Others simply want to charge different prices based on someone’s physical location – a common profit maximization technique.

So these are the fundamental reasons, a desire for an element of privacy online and the ability to control what you can access online. It might be trivial to want to access ABC or the US version of Netflix whilst out of the country – yet for many it’s a real lifeline to their homelife. It’s ironic that in an age where we are all expanding our boundaries and travelling more that the internet is starting to put up more blocks in the form of these region locks. Buying your own high quality US Proxy or better still VPN service does mean that these restrictions are lifted when you’re online. Our recommendation is a service called Identity Cloaker – it gives you access to a secure, encrypted connection to a range of servers across the world – no need to buy a US proxy or a UK one.

Many people use proxies to bypass internet filters and regional restrictions. For example YouTube videos are often restricted to specific countries and it’s quite common to get the message – ‘not available in your country’. However these are enforced by looking up your IP address and if you use a proxy you can effectively bypass these blocks. They work because if you use proxy servers and connect through them, it’s the address of the server which is identified not your real address. So if you use a US proxy you can access US only sites, use a UK server for British web sites and so on. Well this is how it used to work, invest a few pennies to buy a cheap proxy or scrape a cheap proxy list and you were sorted. These days have long gone now because of technical implementations in detecting these servers.

Unfortunately most of the websites that operate these region blocks can detect the use of proxies and they are mostly blocked. Even if you use a high quality US proxy server, you won’t be able to access sites like Netflix or Hulu without receiving these sort of messages –

The usefulness of a proxy server is fairly limited now with more and more sites automatically blocking access from them. There are some issues with this, particularly people who surf through corporate networks for example. Most firms use proxies in order to control access to the internet and limit security problems, so when Hulu blocks access through proxies it’s actually affecting this group as well.

Ensure the High Quality US Proxy Server Has a VPN Mode

If you want to bypass all the region locks and completely remove all of the restrictions on your internet connection then it’s a VPN service you should be using. A VPN is a Virtual private network and operates in a similar way to a proxy server however the connection is encrypted and almost impossible to identify. Even the highest quality proxy server can be detected however there is currently no method for actively identifying an incoming connection from a VPN server.

However, you have to be careful even when selecting a VPN service to use – some of the media companies have started to manually block these services too. What they do is identify IP address ranges and companies who advertise the ability to bypass these blocks and ensure they can’t access the services. Hulu and Netflix have been particularly aggressive in doing this and even some of the UK TV channels like the BBC blocking abroad as well.

In addition there are other measures being used to block connections originating from VPN servers too. The BBC have recently extended their restrictions to include too many concurrent connections from the same IP addresses. For example if you use a very popular VPN service, like Hide my ASS then you’ll be sharing your IP address with many thousands of users. These are easy to detect and simple to block, it doesn’t actually matter how well they are configured if too many people are using them a VPN will be blocked as easily as cheap private proxies. The threshold is difficult to assess and you don’t need to use completely dedicated proxies as long as they are not overloaded.

As you can tell, there are no guarantees on maintaining access to any particular service. Currently Netflix and Hulu are probably the most aggressive in blocking access from VPN enabled services but many still work. You should ensure that your chosen VPN provider is not advertising the ability to watch particular stations. These are always targeted by the media sites, even years ago a private proxy server which promoted access to online TV stations would never last long – nowadays their servers will be blocked very quickly indeed.

Otherwise it really depends on which websites are a priority for you. For example, as mentioned Netflix are one of the most aggressive companies in blocking access and even the best private proxies or VPN servers will be ineffective. This is because in addition to other restrictions they also limit access to IP addresses classified as residential. Unfortunately this instantly rules out 99% of VPN providers who usually are based in commercial data centers which have commercially classified IP ranges. Try and connect to the US version of Netflix from a commercial IP address and you’ll get blocked instantly. It doesn’t matter how well they are configured as even the high quality US proxy services won’t work if they’re tagged with commercial addresses. Some of the more advanced security companies like . have some residential IP address ranges but these are very difficult to obtain for use by commercial companies.

If you want to use a particular service then it’s best to test the functionality first before subscribing for a longer period. There are still VPN services which work with most of the media sites, however some are more difficult than others. Accessing the US version of Netflix is probably the hardest as they only allow a specific category of IP addresses through their firewalls.

The reality is that without having some sort of control of your connection and IP address you will be constantly blocked, filtered and monitored whenever you are online. For those of us who travel it’s even more inconvenient as websites we normally access are suddenly unavailable due to a new location. Being able to hide your address stops all this and hands back control.

Only a couple of years ago there were many options for bypassing the extending region locks that most media sites were using. The internet has been getting more frustrating to use with blocks, bans and ‘not available in your country’ messages appearing every time you try and visit a new site or watch a movie online. It’s pretty bad for a US based surfer but can imagine it’s even more frustrating for people surfing from a smaller country. Netflix has been one of the most aggressive in this area, using very advanced techniques to restrict access from it’s paying subscribers !

Netflix wants to keep French Netflix users using the French Netflix, Canadians using the Canadian version and so on. One of the simplest methods of bypassing these blocks available was a American Netflix DNS solution which previously worked very well. This simply involved pointing whichever device you used to watch Netflix at a specially configured DNS server. This would quietly reroute your initial connection to make it appear you where in a different country to allow you to unblock US Netflix, it worked perfectly and was easy to configure on things like media boxes, phones and tablets.

Unfortunately when Netflix targeted the VPN services, it also obliterated the Netflix DNS options too. Netflix blocked all connections which originated from commercial servers, which included all the Smart DNS solution servers too. In fact it wasn’t really the method which was the problem more the origin of the VPN and US DNS servers.

Instead of trying to detect concurrent users or the presence of the VPN/Proxies, Smart DNS Netflix instead just looked at the classification of the IP address which was connecting. If that IP wasn’t classified as a residential one it would get blocked instantly. So there was no US or UK DNS code that would make a difference unless the server involved was registered as a ‘home user’. Of course none of them where, all these solutions originate from vast commercial data centers – where all the servers are classified as ‘commercial’.

The only option that survived initially were the ‘free solutions’ like Hola which shared your internet bandwidth. You’d get a residential connection through these, but you’d also get umpteen unknown people surfing hard core porn through your registered address too. Using these on your own connection or computer was madness so it looked like Netflix has won.

So No American Netflix DNS Solution Left ?

Fortunately both the VPN services and the Smart DNS providers have started to come up with solutions. Residential IP addresses to allow access to the Netflix network are not easy to get for commercial providers. Some companies have managed to get them and establish a residential server network to facilitate access to Netflix. IDC was the first company to provide a working Netflix VPN and now there’s a Smart DNS Provider too.

The company is called Unblock and is a Canadian company who specialise in Smart DNS solutions. They have actually integrated residential addresses across their networks so you can access all sorts of versions of Netflix. The few VPN providers who now support Netflix access will normally only work with UK and US versions of the site.

Smart DNS is definitely not as secure as using a VPN and may be vulnerable to other detection techniques but at the time of writing the Unblock US solution is working well. So if you’re looking for a working American Netflix DNS solution at the moment it’s your only real option.

At the moment there’s a free trial of the only viable Smart DNS solution available here –FREE Trial of Unblock Here

It was in 2015 that Netflix expanded it’s network onto a truly global platform, adding over 150 countries to it’s reach. Your Netflix account could be used in just about every developed country in the world with only a few exceptions like North Korea and Iran. However although it could be argued that a Netflix account was global that didn’t mean you had complete control over the programmes that you were able to watch.

The main problem people who travel a lot have with their Netflix accounts is that what they can see is largely determined by their physical location. For example if you take out a Netflix subscription in the US and then travel to France, when you sign on to your account you will see the French version of Netflix not the US one. Of course, the French version of Netflix is very different to the US version and obviously contains more French and European content. If you’re a fluent French speaker this might not be a problem, but if you’re half way through a US only boxed set only available in the USA then it might just be.

The reality is that the US version of Netflix has far and away the largest range of content available. In fact compared to some smaller countries you’ll find literally thousands more movies, TV series and documentaries. All this disappears as soon as you travel outside the geographical borders of the United States. Cross over to Canada for example and the same thing will happen, when you log onto Netflix you’ll be redirected to the Canadian version of the site.

So Can I Watch US Netflix in Canada in 2017?

Actually there is a way to control which version of Netflix you see as you can see in the following video:

Simply by using a VPN server to hide your real location, you can actually access the US version of Netflix from Canada or anywhere else for that matter. In fact many people will open a Netflix account in Europe and then only ever watch the US version. You can’t blame them, when you see the amount of movies on the US version of Netflix compared to other countries you’ll be amazed.

For instance, I love the Zombie apocalypse program Z Nation which is available on Netflix. However whenever I check in most European countries there’s only a single series. Whereas on the US version of Netflix you can find four series available for streaming or downloading. This is quite common, you’ll often find that the non-US versions of Netflix are several series behind on many popular shows.

The only time these restrictions are lifted is with content produced directly by Netflix because they own the copyright and distribution rights. So as their model switches more towards Netflix produced movies and shows then this will be slightly less of an issue. However until then if you want to watch the best version and access US Netflix in Canada or any other country in 2017 then you should check out a VPN service.